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Winter 2005
Foxes roam the cemetery, coyotes prowl through neighborhoods, and deer are everywhere. One is tempted to say, "Hooray for wild nature!" But, in truth, I am worried.
As the coyote population increases and some people lose pets, calls may mount to capture or kill the predators. (We humans have a long and unedifying history of doing just that.)
The challenge is ours, we who have so tinkered with natural systems and so altered the landscape. How can we live close to wild nature in a healthy, sustainable way? What is our responsibility to coyotes and deer as well as to the ecosystems on which they depend? That's what Bill Lynn is getting at when he explores the realm of practical ethics — his term for the task of living with nature in an ethical way.
Coyotes and deer are central challenges for us in Chicago Wilderness. We love deer and want them in our woods where they belong. And we love the rest of our precious ecosystems. The same savannas that provide food and shelter for deer harbor rare orchids and rare hawks. (Hooray for wild nature!)
But the natural checks and balances that led to healthy flourishing oak woods and prairies no longer exist. It's that tinkering I mentioned — removal of predators, fragmentation of habitat, suppression of fire. As a result, deer populations, left unchecked, wreak havoc on the rest of nature.
As humans, we get the precious proxy vote for nature. I mean this quite literally, of course. Animals can't vote; neither can plants. We serve as the Electoral College for the rest of creation. We, at least, have the capacity — and occasionally the wisdom — to act on behalf of individual animals, species, populations, and entire natural communities. The deer would never vote for their predators, for instance, though predators are part of the whole. Their presence benefits deer and the ecosystem both.
The task before us is to mend what philosopher-theologian Thomas Berry calls the "radical discontinuity" between the human and the nonhuman. In Berry's view, the current situation, in which all rights have been bestowed upon humans and none upon other modes of being, is untenable and wrong. Berry calls upon us to manage the "arduous transition" from our current mode — in which modern industrial civilization has had a devastating influence on the Earth — to the emerging "Ecozoic Era, the period when humans will be present to the planet as participating members of the comprehensive Earth community."
Aldo Leopold called it a "land ethic." We call it the vision of Chicago Wilderness — to work toward a culture where family values include not merely the family of man, but the entire web of life — where we exercise our privileged position as proxies for the rest of nature with humility, not hubris.
Thomas Berry calls this The Great Work. Are we up to this sacred task? My head says 'I think so.' My heart says, 'I dearly hope so.' 
Debra Shore may
be reached at editor@chicagowildernessmag.org.
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